Fresh speculation about tension between Shashi Tharoor and the Congress leadership has resurfaced after the Thiruvananthapuram MP skipped yet another key meeting called by Rahul Gandhi. This is the third straight Congress meeting Tharoor has missed in just three weeks, triggering new debates inside the party over his growing distance.

Rahul Gandhi met with Congress Lok Sabha MPs on Friday to review their performance and sharpen the party’s strategy against the BJP during the final days of the Winter Session. While 99 MPs attended, Tharoor was again absent. His public timeline on X showed he was in Kolkata for the wedding of his long-time aide John Koshy and later in Delhi for his sister Smita Tharoor’s birthday.

This absence adds to a string of missed meetings. On November 30, Tharoor didn’t attend a strategy session led by Sonia Gandhi, explaining that he was on a delayed flight from Kerala with his 90-year-old mother. Another meeting on November 18 — focused on the party’s opposition to the Special Intensive Revision of voter lists — was missed due to illness, according to Tharoor. That day, however, he had attended a private event where Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke, and Tharoor’s praise for the PM on X reignited internal criticism.

Congress leaders Supriya Shrinate and Sandeep Dikshit openly disagreed with Tharoor’s comments, with Dikshit going as far as suggesting he join the BJP if he admired the PM’s speech so much. Tharoor firmly rejected the idea and reminded colleagues that India’s federal structure demands cooperation between governments, even when political ideologies differ.